45. Mihara Ken  三原研

 Ken Mihara was born in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, in 1958.  He was educated by Funaki Kenji, a student of Hamada Shoji and Bernard Leach, among others. After completing his training in 1982, Ken Mihara participated in numerous exhibitions and won many awards including the prestigious Japan Ceramic Society Award in 2008. His works testify to the austere, minimal and rugged beauty of his native region, which Ken Mihara says has always been his main inspiration. For his scuptures, he uses clay with a high iron content from the hills near his hometown of Izumo, which he forms by hand and fires up to three times with variations of extreme reduction and oxidation. The results are characteristic of Ken Mihara's ceramic work in blue and gray tones and soft-rough clay surfaces. The aesthetic qualities of serenity and the sublime come together in Ken Mihara's work that embody the austere, spiritual simplicity of the Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetic.

Ken Mihara is among Japan's most lauded ceramicists and his works are in the collections of nearly 40 museums around the world including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo.